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Super Mario Run Is Coming To Ios On December 15

The Division (Photo: Ubisoft)

Yesterday, I got my hard copy of The Division. Two and a half hours after putting the disc in, I was playing the game.

With discs taking almost as long to install as digital downloads, taking up just as much hard drive space, and being much more inconvenient to acquire, I just don’t see the point anymore. In short, I’m in 2013.

Back then, Microsoft was planning to make discs practically irrelevant. The idea was to make the Xbox One almost entirely reliant on digital downloads, and if discs were used, they would essentially just be vessels to install the game, and they would prove you had the “rights” to it.

The backlash was swift and merciless. Players bemoaned the idea of switching over to most digital, mainly because they thought that using discs like this would destroy the used games market, make collections obsolete eventually, would eliminate game sharing, and a few other reasons that made the concept untenable.

Sony famously mocked Microsoft over the issue, debuting a video that showed their plan for disc sharing, which simply had one person passing a game to another. Microsoft was humiliated, and forced to relent before the release of the console, and discs now operate on the system the way they always have.

Sony's game sharing policy (Photo: Sony)

But they don’t, not really, and now I’m starting to see Microsoft’s point, and why they wanted to start to phase out discs altogether. And I’m not the only one. Year after year, digital revenue continues to climb as more and more players download games from PSN and XBL directly (and of course PC players have been doing this for years). So what’s changed? Why are all these angry mobs suddenly starting to come around?

For a few reasons. As I said, discs are not what they used to be. Now, the process of getting a game on a disc is not simply “pop and play.” Rather, you have to go through a lengthy installation/patching process that can often take nearly as long as it would if you were doing a digital download. But with a digital download, most games allow you to pre-load titles ahead of release, so you don’t have to muck through that on launch day. Not so with discs you acquire on launch day, and you will go through that process regardless.

An argument against digital downloads has been that hard drive space is still too limited for the concept to be viable, and while I do agree that all consoles need bigger hard drives, you can make that argument about discs as well, but it’s even worse. Most of these games will still take up a huge chunk of your hard drive, even if you’re playing them “from the disc.” And most of the time, despite leaving a load of GBs on your console after an install, you will still have to pop in the disc when you want to play, as opposed to downloads which are ready to launch whenever.

Another common refrain is that people are worried that they’re “going to lose their games” when companies suddenly decide to revoke your ownership rights. To me, that seems a bit paranoid (do people really worry about iTunes just nuking their libraries one day?), but past that, the reality is that in this modern era, you are probably not going to be able to play a lot of games anyway years later, discs or no discs

An Xbox One library (Photo: Microsoft)

Take The Division itself, for instance. It’s an always online game that requires servers to play every mode, even single player. Someday, be it 5-10 years from now, will probably take those servers down. At that point, it will not matter if you own a disc or a digital copy. Neither will work. And we’re already seeing this with more recent “older” games. I can’t go back and play Halo 3 multiplayer, one of my favorite games of all time, because the servers have been taken down. For many multiplayer games, this has already happened, and all you’re left with is a shell where you can only play single player or local co-op. And with how online-connected most games are now, in the future, you may not be able to play them at all with no servers. I’m not saying that’s right, but that’s reality, and it’s a separate sort of problem that has nothing to do with discs vs. digital. Both versions of the game will be affected the same way.

The arguments for discs are often directly conflicting with one another. People say they miss having a physical game collection on their shelf they can look at, and they want the ability to play old games when they want. But the other prime argument is that people want the ability to play a game and instantly turn around and pawn it at GameStop, which makes those other two reasons pointless, as you will never actually have a collection of games, if you keep selling them back for new ones.

The GameStop argument may be the most compelling, and it always was, but this pawnshop economy seems less and less necessary as time has gone on. As I said, PC gaming has ditched discs for years now, and they’re doing just fine. The idea that they would be popping discs in and out of their rigs to play games at this point is laughable, so why is it such a must-have for consoles?

Photo: Gamestop

Part of the reason PC gamers are cool with not having used games to trade-in is because of big-time sales across platforms like Steam. But now, we’re starting to see some pretty big digital sales across PSN and XBL, much more often than we used to, in addition to both subscription services just straight-up offering free games on a monthly basis.

If GameStop dies and the used games market goes with it, in order to drive sales of new and old games alike, we will start to see even more sales like these. It just isn’t accurate to say anymore that all digital games are $60, and the used games market is much, much more cost-effective. It may be, to some extent, but again, consider what you’re losing. You can get yourself in this endless cycle where you’re buying new games for $60, selling them for $30, and repeating that, but what are you giving up? The ability to ever actually grow a collection of games. I may have deleted dozens of digital games from my consoles to clear room for new ones, but they are still mine. I can go back and download them whenever I want. But at GameStop, if you want to play that game you used to own, but sold back, it will cost you.

My arguments may not be perfect, and I welcome dissent, but I do think the market has changed even since three years ago, and this issue is not as black and white as it once was. It used to just be the only real argument in favor of digital was saving a trip to the store. But it’s more than that now, as digital offers new benefits, and discs offer almost nothing but further inconvenience. If we do get a new console generation after this one, I would not shed a tear if this time, discs were killed for good.